HL2 and Doom3 weeks away - new graphics card discussion

[old.user4556]

All,

The above games are due very soon so it may be time for an upgrade. The contenders so far are the ATi X800 Pro (~£300), ATi X800 XT (~£380), nVidia 6800 Ultra (~£390) or the nVidia 6800 GT (~£300).

From the Doom3 benchies here, it looks like the X800 Pro is fair lagging behind the pack with the 6800 GT keeping ahead of the X800 XT and not far off the ultra. Then I saw farcry benchies with PS3 over here , and again the 6800 GT looks the shit nearly keeping up with the ultra. I believe that the GT has the same 16 pipes that the ultra has, but lower clocker core/memory as opposed to the 12 pipes of the X800 Pro (or a "faster 9800 XT" as Xavier mentioned to me ). Turns out, the 6800 GT can overclock to the ultra speeds fairly comfortably (see here).

I have found some benchmarks (unreal tournament) that suggest the X800 Pro to be a bit quicker, but in DX9 it appears to perform fantasticly.

For £300, the 6800 GT looks the absolute shit and it's won me over as a hot contender for an upgrade. Any reason not to go down the nVidia path (been with ATi for a year now)?

Bring the ATi and nVidia fanboys out and let the flamming ..er.. discussing begin.

G

 

[Danya]

Depends which you're more interested in - HL2 is looking to be a lot faster on ATI cards than nvidia, though it's hard to say for sure until it's released (if ever). If doom3 is what you want, get the nvidia card, otherwise you might want to look into ATI (or just buy whatever is cheaper).

 

[Clown]

If doom3 is what you want, get the nvidia card, otherwise you might want to look into ATI (or just buy whatever is cheaper).

Either way, whichever one you buy, you will be getting some sort of graphics card.

 

[old.user4556]

Yes, there is HL2 also, but the whole "HL2 runs better on ATi" is a hangover from last year where it did run better on the 9800 Pro/XT. We're onto new technology and better/newer drivers and I suspect that the performance gap on HL2 will surely have closed.

I guess we'll have to wait, lets not forget unreal 3 :eek2: on the nVidia platform.

Oh decisions

G

 

[Jonty]

Hi guys

Couldn't resist dropping by

Subjective

Today I received my new graphics card. It's from Savastore who currently have MSI's 6800 (non-Ultra) card for £188, that's around £50 less than most other stores which stock it at ~£240 (and many of them don't have stock).

Whilst the 6800 has been overshadowed by the GT and Ultra, at this price it is a far more attractive offer, not to mention ...

• It seems to outperform 9800XT / 5950 Ultra cards
• It supports SM3.0 and other 'next-gen' features
• It can be overclocked to around 370Mhz / 930Mhz on stock cooling (so reviews suggest)
• It's MSI, hence a lot of software (14 CDs)

The whole product is very nice indeed, with the (large!) box including:

• MSI GeForce 6800 card (with non-reference design cooling solution)
• Three full games: URU (1 CD), XIII (4CDs), Prince of Persia (2 CDs)
• 14-in-1 Game Collection (All demos, 1 DVD)
• Other software: MSI Drivers and Utilities (1 CD), 3D Desktop (1 CD), Photo Applications (1 CD), DVD Player (1 CD), Virtual Drive software (1 CD), MSI Media Centre (1 CD)
• VGA to DVI Adapter
• 2 PSU Connector Cables (although only one is needed)
• TV-Out Extension Cable
• Quick Start Guide

The card is the same size as my old 5700 Ultra, which although large, fits snuggly in my Shuttle system.

The cooling solution looks slightly different to the standard reference design. It also comes with a switch on top of the unit with allows you between two fan speeds, notated in RPM (3xxx RPM and 4xxx RPM, I forget the precise numbers), and it also provides the different noise ratings (30dB and 39dB for low and high settings respectively).

Objective

Now if money was no object, I'd probably go for a 6800 GT. It's performance is stellar for the money, so much so that ATI are thought to be responding with an X800 GT variant to more accurately match the GT's specs (not that the X800 Pro is far off).

Ironically, PC World's Component Store is one of the few places with 6800 cards in stock. They have a PNY GT card, which although based around the reference design is:

• In stock (Surprisingly!)
• £265 (was £275)
• May ship with Far Cry (not officially announced, I believe)

Sure, it doesn't feature a bundle like MSI's, nor overclocking like Gainwards (many of which have sadly shipped with dodgy BIOS), but it's good if you're impatient!

In terms of ATI, expect their performance in Doom 3 to improve. nVidia has always been strong in OpenGL, and their close relationship with regards Doom 3 has always been known. And whilst I'm the first to admit I love nVidia, HardOCP's Doom 3 article was a little sycophantic. That said, nVidia should continue to perform well in Doom 3, but this should be balanced by ATI's Half-Life 2 performance (although, ironically, benchmarks with pre-production 6800 cards on a beta of HL2 put nVidia slightly ahead of ATI, despite all of Valve's ATI optimisations (not that this means much given the early nature of everything tested)).

Coming back to the point, for the price, the X800 Pro looks like a nice card. The XT is undoubtedly very powerful, but looks to be rather expensive, and very hard to get hold of. Finally the GT variant which has been rumoured is an interesting proposition for the bang-for-buck factor, but expect it to take a while to filter through to the market if it ever becomes anything more than a rumour.

Hope this helps!

 

[old.user4556]

Interesting post Jonty, it's great to have your input .

I'm hoping someone will give Xavier a twak because I'd like his input here too.

G

 

[old.user4556]

Found this on HL2 benchies on a suposedly "beta" version. Not sure how authentic that benchmark is.

G

 

[inactionman]

I'll admit that i've gone for the Leadtek 6800 GT (getting a big TFT monitor, so may as well turn it into a TV as well!).

I've only had one ATI card (a 9800 pro), but I've had quite a few driver problems with it, Nvidia always seem better for driver support! Especially for non-windows operating systems.

Apparently ATI are completely rewriting their OpenGL implementation, so that may improve performance in D3 based games, and they seem to be taking driver development more seriously, but it's always been their achillies heel.

All in all, go for whichever you think will do what you need to do. ATI's cards are good, run cool, and don't draw huge amounts of power, but it seems that the nvidia cards perform better and have better future-proofing.

 

[Danya]

I guess we'll have to wait, lets not forget unreal 3 :eek2: on the nVidia platform.

Unreal 3 runs on both - you can actually run it on a 9800 pro or GF-FX card, if you don't mind watching a slide-show.
In any event unreal 3 shouldn't be a planning point as it's being targetted at the generation of cards after the 6800/X800 (running unreal3 on them will be akin to running doom3 on a 9800 pro).

 

[old.user4556]

Yes, but correct me if i'm wrong, don't you need a card that supports PS3 to get all the yummy looking effects? i.e a 6800 based card?

That was what i was referring to, not that it wouldn't run on ATi cards.

G

 

[.Wilier.]

Interesting post Jonty, it's great to have your input .

I'm hoping someone will give Xavier a twak because I'd like his input here too.

G

Unfortunatley, Xav wont be posting for a while I think. He's got a new job and is working more hours than should be considered human tbh (about time he did something for a living )

I'll give him a ring tnite, see if he can get involved over the weekend.

 

[Jonty]

Yes, but correct me if i'm wrong, don't you need a card that supports PS3 to get all the yummy looking effects? i.e a 6800 based card?

Hi Big G

As far as I know, and information is still scarce, shader model (SM) 3.0 is a requirement of the new engine at present, hence why all the Unreal 3 demos are running on 6800 cards. Unreal 3 is designed to be a 2006 title, and that's why today's high-end cards are being seen at present as the low-end cards for the game.

That said, a great deal of what SM3.0 does is merely doing what SM2.x can in a far more efficient way. That's why new fancy effects in Far Cry v1.2 are possible, as a 6800 can add these effects with around 4x less work than SM2.x cards can. So, it may be possible to run Unreal 3 with a SM2.x card, merely with many of the advanced shaders turned off.

That said, developers have shown great consideration for scaling engines to accommodate high-end and low-end systems (Doom 3, Half-Life 2 especially), so maybe by 2006 the situation will have changed with regards cards that can run Unreal 3.

Kind Regards

 

[Clown]

Xavier gone, Jonty came back... What a good swap

 

[Jonty]

hehe, less of that, Clown I'm not stopping, sadly, and I don't doubt Xavier will be back. Anyway, just thought I'd post some quick piccies of my system with the card in situ. Not that it contributes anything to the discussion, other than you can run a 6800 in a Shuttle without power problems.







Kind Regards

 

[smurkin]

eeehhh, I think we should dust off the old shuttle thread...plenty of new models to drool over

/sorry...off topic

 

[Clown]

Is the middle picture in widescreen mode or something?

 

[TdC]

bah, Jonty's made me jealous

specially of how neat his desk is

 

[Jonty]

smurkin: There are indeed some lovely new Shuttles My personal favourite hasn't been released, but looks set to be based around Intel's 925 chipset, feature Shuttle's BTX small form factor design, and support DDR-II, Socket 775 and PCI-Express etc. Very nice indeed, plus it looks lovely with a black design with stealthed bays akin to the SB83G5 (to look at, the below in black, effectively) ...

Clown: Nought like cheek Actually I was cropping the pictures as they were done a little too quickly, and that one wouldn't fit into the 4:3 ratio of the others.

TdC: hehe I'm one of those strange people who likes everything just so.

 

[TdC]

hehe indeed. my desk looks like someone spewed a partially masticated letters archive on it :/ but then....my cleaner has strict orders not to venture into the 'poota nook'


bah, shuttles are so wonderful. I simply *must* have one, if only to fondle on cold evenings

 

[Danya]

Hi Big G

As far as I know, and information is still scarce, shader model (SM) 3.0 is a requirement of the new engine at present, hence why all the Unreal 3 demos are running on 6800 cards. Unreal 3 is designed to be a 2006 title, and that's why today's high-end cards are being seen at present as the low-end cards for the game.

That said, a great deal of what SM3.0 does is merely doing what SM2.x can in a far more efficient way. That's why new fancy effects in Far Cry v1.2 are possible, as a 6800 can add these effects with around 4x less work than SM2.x cards can. So, it may be possible to run Unreal 3 with a SM2.x card, merely with many of the advanced shaders turned off.

That said, developers have shown great consideration for scaling engines to accommodate high-end and low-end systems (Doom 3, Half-Life 2 especially), so maybe by 2006 the situation will have changed with regards cards that can run Unreal 3.

Kind Regards

At present the engine is 2.0 maximum, I'm not sure how much epic plans to do with 3.0, ut regardless you'll be needing a new card to make unreal 3 fly purely due to complexity of models, regardless of which shader model they mainly use.

As for effficiency, there's no efficiency bonus for going from 2.x to 3.0, the only reason to target 3.0 over 2.x is if you need something unsupported by 2.x - in general, the higher the version of shader the slower it goes (not so much with 2.0 vs 3.0, but it's really apparent with 1.x vs 2.0).

 

[Jonty]

Hi Danya

Thanks for putting me straight I was just going off what bits I remembered from a Tim Sweeney interview a while back, but such things get a little beyond me at times It seems a DirectX 9 compliant card is the requirement, not necessarily SM3.0, although performance on early-generation DX9 cards may not be great.

Kind Regards

Jonty

Q. With the GeForce 6 (and presumably other future SM 3.0 parts from other Independent Hardware Vendors) being made available, do you prefer Pixel Shader 3.0 and writing "fallbacks" Pixel Shader 2.0, or do you prefer 2.0 and write extra codes for 3.0 usage?

A. A major design goal of Unreal Engine 3 is that designers should never, ever have to think about "fallback" shaders ... We support everything everywhere, and use new hardware features like PS3.0 to implement optimizations: reducing the number of rendering passes to implement an effect, to reduce the number of SetRenderTarget operations needed by performing blending in-place, and so on.

Q. NVIDIA's latest GeForce 6 series of video cards has support for Shader Model 3.0 ... could you tell us what are the more interesting and useable advantages SM3.0 offers over the current SM 2.0 model?

PS 3.0 utilizes a wide range of optimizations, from 64-bit frame-buffer blending to looping and dynamic conditionals for rendering multiple light interactions in a single pass without requiring a combinatorical explosion of precompiled shaders.

Q. You have said that UE3 will target DX9-based video cards as the absolute lowest denominator, even to the point of saying DX9 cards such as the GeForceFXs and Radeon 9x00s will be brought to their knees in terms of performance ...

A. DirectX9 is our minimum hardware target for Unreal Engine 3 ...

 

[Danya]

Yeah that sounds about right - ps3.0 allows you to do things in fewer steps in many instances due to many more features, if you look at it that way it's an optimisation over 2.0. Note, the actual differences between the 2.x offered by x800 and 3.0 offered by 6800 are not that large though, so you won't see as much difference (if any) there.

 

[TdC]

ahem


comic

 

[smurkin]

ahem


comic

Heheheee :bazbeer:

 

[Danya]

BTW Jonty, since you have one - is the 6800 one power connector or two? I could only see one visible in your pics but I'm sure the specs were for two...

 

[Jonty]

BTW Jonty, since you have one - is the 6800 one power connector or two? I could only see one visible in your pics but I'm sure the specs were for two...

Hi Danya

Basically, the 6800 non-Ultra and the 6800 GT have only one power connector and ideally require a 350W power supply (Shuttle's tend to defy these conventions, because of the size of the system, the fewer components installed, and because of the quality of the PSUs).

For the 6800 Ultra, two power connectors are present on just about all cards. The initial requirements were for a 480W PSU, but these have since been restated to the 350W standard. Now the odd thing is that some Ultra users have been able to run the card without problem using only one power connector (it must be the uppermost one, using just the lower one will result in the machine not booting). It is thus claimed the second one is only required for overclocking the card.

Anyway, that aside, 6800 non-Ultra and GT: one power connector; 6800 Ultra: two power connectors.

Kind Regards

Jonty

P.S. The 6800 LE which is rumoured (lower clock than the 6800 non-Ultra and only 8 pipelines, but cheaper price) would also be based around one power connector.
P.P.S. The power requirements for PCI-Express cards are a whole different ball game.

 

[RandomBastard]

Is the 6800 non ultra worth £40/50 more than a 9800 pro? As i was going to get a 9800 pro in the next week or two but with the 6800 non ultra at that low price i just may try to grab one.

 

[SawTooTH]

Anyone know where to buy the Radeon X800 XT? The problem is Im feeling slightly more inclined to buy a 6800 Ultra these days as they seem to be more readily availiable and my resolve is weakening with more recent reviews of their performance. I keep bouncing from ATI to Nvidia, but I really want to play Half life 2. Does anyone know how the 6800 performs with that engine? Im so close to buying its frightening. heeeeeeelllllppp meeeeeeeeee!

 

[Ch3tan]

Wait till Half life 2 and Doom 3 are out? That way you#ll pay less for the card and you will know beyond doubt which performs better. Its only a matter of months, be patient.

 

[Jonty]

RandomBastard: In terms of raw performance, the 6800 non-Ultra will beat a 9800 Pro in just about any test (in fact, it is designed to outperform the 9800XT/5950Ultra generation of cards). Add to this the fact it supports next-gen. features makes it an attractive buy. That said, £40/50 is a lot of money, and does really depend on how long you'll be keeping the card. If you're going to ditch it by the end of the year for some fancy 512Mb PCI-Express solution, then I guess there's not much point spending the extra. If you plan on keeping the card for longer, then the extra power will certainly come in handy.

SawTooTH: Pretty much everywhere is struggling to get x800 XT/XT PE stock. MicroDirect, OcUK, Scan, Komplett (I know how to get a discount with some cards there, so let me know), Tekheads, Overclock.co.uk etc. are all on pre-order. x800 Pros are far more readily available.

PC World Component Store does have the Sapphire x800 XT in stock for £367.73, however.

As Ch3tan says, you could both wait, however Doom 3 is due to be with us at the beginning of August, and will play better on nVidia. If the HL2 bug tracking goes at the same rate as it has been, the game will be gold in a fortnight, and will probably play better on an ATi. That said, whatever card you buy, you ought not to be disappointed.

Kind Regards